1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic musical instruments, and more particularly to percussion input devices for personal computers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Musical instruments have traditionally been mechanical in nature. For example, string instruments (such as violins and guitars) produce musical notes due to the mechanical vibration of their strings. Wind instruments (such as the clarinet or saxophone) produce musical notes by the mechanical vibration of a reed and by the amplification of the tone produced by the reed within resonance chambers of the instrument. Percussion instruments (such as drums and cymbals) produce percussive sounds through the mechanical vibration of a membrane or other percussive surface.
With the advent of the electronics age, a number of musical instruments have been electronically synthesized. Among the first of the musical synthesizers is the MOOG.TM. synthesizer first developed in the early 1960's which produced various musical sounds by mixing a number of analog signals together. Later, with the advent of inexpensive digital processing, digitally synthesized musical instruments began to appear.
One type of digitally synthesized musical instrument is the electronic drum pad or drum set. An electronically synthesized drum pad includes a force sensor, digital electronics coupled to the force sensor, an audio amplifier, and a loudspeaker. When a musician beats upon the drum pad with a drumstick or other object, the digital electronics synthesizes a drum signal which is amplified and played on the loudspeaker.
Electronically synthesized drum pads of the prior art fall into two general categories. In the first category, the drum pads are integrated with dedicated digital synthesis electronics. This type of electronically synthesized drum pad is convenient, but tends to be less flexible and more limited in capability. A second category of electronically synthesized drum pads uses an external digital processing system which may be a general purpose music synthesizer, or which may be a general computer system such as a personal computer system.
The electronic drum pads of the prior art tend to be complex and quite expensive. For example, electronic drum pads of the prior art are typically provided with driver electronics which support a MIDI interface bus to interface with a music synthesizer or personal computer system. These interfaces require a significant amount of digital circuitry (e.g. a microprocessor or other logic device) and have substantial memory requirements (e.g. SRAM) and, therefore, these interfaces typically have more than a trivial cost.
An additional problem with prior art drum pads that work in conjunction with personal computers is that they occupy valuable desk-space. Since most personal computers now utilize a mouse or other type of pointing device, it can be difficult to provide both a mouse pad and a drum pad on a desk next to the personal computers. Since drum pads of the prior art tend to be small and round, they are unsuitable for use as a mouse pad.
Furthermore, drum pads of the prior art tend to be dedicated for musical purposes. It would be desirable to have a drum pad that can serve multiple purposes, such as a game input, selector switch input, etc. to a personal computer system.